Teen's note found on peak 40 years later

LOS ANGELES A man, his son and grandson climbed a mountain peak with no name, but there was one on a 40-year-old note they found there.

The note read: “Tim Taylor climbed to this peak, Thursday, August 17, 1972. Age 13 years. Anyone finding this note please write.”

The three were on an 11-day trip to Sequoia National Park last month when they climbed a Sierra Nevada summit that appears nameless on maps.

Near the top, the trio came across a rusted canister stuffed with the teenager's note.

Larry Wright, 69, of Oakland who found the note, and his wife, Cindy, didn't have to talk to too many reporters before locating Taylor. It turns out he is Judge Timothy Taylor of San Diego Superior Court. Appointed to the bench in 2005 to handle criminal, civil and family law cases, he was elected to a six-year term in 2006.

Taylor lived with his family in La Cañada Flintridge when he took the trip in the Sierra Nevada as a teenage Boy Scout and left the note.

He's married to a bankruptcy judge who he said got a laugh out of the buzz the note caused.

Taylor said he's gotten about 50 calls about his old note.

“The whole thing has been great,” he said.

Taylor said he remembered the day vividly.

After planting the note on his solo venture, he returned to base camp and caught grasshoppers and “epic trout” with fellow Scouts.

It also wasn't the only note he ever left behind, he said.

“Whenever (my family) would go to Catalina, my dad would have us put a note in a bottle,” Taylor said. “It's kind of the same idea.”

Wright, an avid hiker, said he'd been through the area several times.

“The first time I had been in this area was in 1979, seven years after Tim left the note,” Wright said.

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